


Eventuality

by thedevilchicken



Category: Jurassic Park III (2001)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Community: smallfandomfest, First Kiss, M/M, Misunderstandings, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2015-07-06
Packaged: 2018-04-08 01:53:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4286166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten years after their trip to Isla Sorna, Alan and Billy finally catch up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eventuality

**Author's Note:**

> Written for smallfandomfest 17. The prompt used here is "ten years later."

Conferences aren’t exactly Alan’s favourite pastime. There’s something about wearing a suit and tie while he pontificates to a room filled with his peers that while satisfying on the abstract level of bringing his work out to the broader community of academia is irksome on a level that’s much more personal. He’d rather be at home writing his new book or in a field in the desert with a trowel in one hand having heated arguments over stratigraphy and dendrochronology and ground-penetrating radar. As it is, he’s in Florida in a suit that’s too hot for the weather and a shirt collar that feels half an inch too tight under the tie that makes him look like a second-rate newscaster. There’s a PowerPoint on a USB in his top pocket that Lex spent an hour explaining to him last week long-distance from DC because he’s presenting again later today. He hates computers, even now. Lex is a godsend in that respect; he just wishes she were here. Unfortunately, he’s there alone.

Tim’s in his class these days, 22 years old and forever precocious, taking the taught master’s degree Alan’s department head manipulated him reluctantly into offering in exchange for new funds for his dig. Tim’s still fascinated by dinosaurs even after everything that’s happened, which is quite a wonder, and Alan thinks maybe next year, when Tim starts his PhD, he’ll start taking him out to these godforsaken conferences because then at least he’ll have a convenient out when people want to talk to him and talk to him and talk to him about his work and those other things he’ll never get away from if he lives to be a hundred. Tim’s just as talkative now as he ever was whereas Alan’s never exactly seen himself as garrulous; he thinks that’ll save him some stress before he finally retires. He’s over 50 now, thinks another five or six years and he’ll be ready then to give it all up. Or maybe he won’t; he’ll just have to wait and see. Maybe he’ll dig in the dirt forever. 

“Dr Grant.”

He looks up from his notebook - he’s writing his book in it, longhand, though Lex often despairs of that when she’s gone out of her way to set him up with a perfectly good desktop PC and more than adequate instructions for its use. He’s just concerned in the back of his mind that one day he’ll go to it and find the book’s all gone without a trace and while he’s got most of the text tucked away in his head it’s not something he wishes to rewrite just because his ages-old computer curse has struck again. He sees only milling suits, people toting coffees though the weather’s far too hot outside for that, colleagues from around the world whose names he guesses he’d know if he were wearing his glasses or cared enough to remember. But as far as he can see there’s no one there who’s called his name. 

“Alan.”

And then Billy Brennan steps out of the coffee-swilling masses with a broad, familiar smile and Alan sits there looking at him dumbly. 

He knew Billy would be there, of course; perhaps there’ve been times through the years when he’s arrived at a conference without so much as a glance at the programme but this is actually, strangely, not one of those times. He admits it took a while for the penny to drop and him to realise that _Dr William Brennan_ was in fact his former student, but he did realise in the end, on the flight down from Chicago. They’ve been missing each other at conferences and academic events for years by now, sometimes Alan knows they’re in the same place at the same time but they never actually manage to meet. Not that they’ve been avoiding each other, ever, at all: Alan won’t admit to that. 

“Dr Brennan.”

“Look, my students have a poster presentation I’m about to miss,” Billy says, and he’s digging through his cross-body bag, glancing up at Alan every few seconds as he does so and Alan just watches him do it because it’s oddly fascinating, as is the thought that he missed this. “But it’s been forever. Can we catch up? Dinner? Do you have plans tonight?”

“Dinner,” Alan says, watching Hurricane Billy search for what he assumes is a pen and some paper. Apparently his organisational skill hasn’t changed in the past eight years since they last saw each other, back in Alan’s office when Billy told him he was leaving, and so Alan passes him his notebook and his worn old ballpoint pen, the one he’s had since before he even heard about Jurassic Park, an old birthday gift from Ellie. Billy scrawls his number there hugely over the width of the back cover instead of on a page before he hands it back and Alan can’t help but think he sort of asked for that, knowing Billy as he used to. It should have been expected.

“Call me,” Billy says, flashing him a smile. “Around 7. We’ll set something up.”

Alan nods, and Billy exits the scene just like he’s chased by bears, just like he always has. It’s like it’s been no time at all. It’s like they saw each other only yesterday.

***

When they came home from Isla Sorna, after hospitals and numerous little chats with the US State Department and the whole fandango that resulted from the Kirbys’ little escapade, Billy took his time about finishing up his doctorate. Alan couldn’t say he really blamed him were he honest, though he thinks now that it wouldn’t have killed him to explain his position on the matter to Billy himself instead of just pleading his case to the department. Billy was in physio so often for his injury recovery that he barely had the time or energy to TA for Alan’s classes, which he found were strangely overflowing at the start of term with students expecting stories of Jurassic Park. Numbers dwindled once they realised Dr Grant’s class was hardcore osteoarchaeology and not pretty pictures of the horrors living there off Costa Rica. 

It took two more years for Billy to finish, to walk into his viva without crutches or a leg brace and come out with just very minor corrections on his work. Then Billy walked into Alan’s office and told him he’d be leaving. He’d somehow just assumed he’d stay, he’d take him on as a postdoc research assistant and they’d be back out in the desert over summer, working together. He remembers how sorry he was to find he was wrong. 

At 7pm he dials Billy’s number. 

“Hello?” A girl’s voice on the line, young, unfamiliar. 

“Can I speak to Dr Brennan?” Alan asks, when what he wants to ask is who she is, if he’s got the wrong number, if he’s misread Billy’s scrawl there on the notebook cover but she just passes him on without another word. Kids these days are getting less and less polite, Alan thinks, and knows he’s getting crotchety in his advancing age. 

They arrange to meet at 7.30 in the hotel restaurant. Alan’s read already, sitting on his slightly lumpy hotel bed but he’s known many worse, in khakis he probably wore on the dig last summer like that’s normal dress for dinner in an almost-nice hotel. He goes down early though he knows Billy’s going to be late because he always was, and sits at a table in the corner out of the way, a table for two where he drinks three glasses of water to pass the time and wonders why he’s more nervous now that he’s been in years. He’s given lectures to hundreds of students at a time, presented to hundreds of his peers just today, written books, been interviewed for radio and for television, but in years he hasn’t felt like this. It makes him uncomfortable but he’s not sure if he should dislike it.

“Alan,” Billy says, and he slips into the one spare seat at the table. “I hope I didn’t keep you waiting.”

“You always did,” Alan says, and Billy laughs, shrugs his shoulders to concede the point. 

They talk about Billy’s dig site out in Colorado, finds and funding and students; it’s been hard to imagine Billy Brennan with students of his own but Alan finds that he can see it now, now he’s seen Billy with wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, in glasses that he never used to need. They’re both older and Alan isn’t sure why Billy’s never aged in his head. He’s kept him just the way he was in his memories though he’s seen photos in the meantime. 

They order and they eat and Billy does most of the talking but Alan finds he still has no real problems with that fact at all. It’s still easy, perhaps because Billy is a lot like Tim in his ability to chatter away to no particular purpose and it’s familiar, like the prose in Billy’s first book that Alan reviewed in a journal without ever speaking to him about it. He’d thought about calling but told himself he didn’t know the number; Lex suggested email and wasn’t surprised when he balked at the idea. Over the years he’s found himself acting like some kind of semi-reluctant grandfather replacement for the overachieving Murphy kids, discussing Tim’s studies on the phone all through high school, explaining to Lex that “hacking” is not a legitimate career path until she settled into something cryptographic that Alan barely understands but Ian finds impressive. She works for the government but can’t say precisely what she does so Alan can only take that as a good sign, even if he has to wonder what it means for national security if Lex Murphy’s their employee. 

Billy stops abruptly, perhaps mid-sentence but Alan realises he’s meandered in his train of thought so really couldn’t say. He frowns at Billy. Billy frowns at him. 

“Do you still think about it?” Billy asks. 

He doesn’t have to ask what he’s referring to because even now, even ten years and several thousand miles, all anyone ever wants to say to him is _Jurassic Park_. He’ll never forget it, not just because it’s still there in his dreams at night but because no one will ever let him forget. It’s the question in the back of everyone’s mind when they talk to him, even when they don’t ask the question outright. It’s always there. 

“I think about it,” he confirms. 

“Is that why you’ve avoided me for the past eight years?”

“It’s nearly nine,” Alan says, and realises just a beat too late that this isn’t the denial he’d meant for it to be. 

Billy laughs over his half-eaten dessert, an unfortunate-looking key lime pie to Alan’s ill-considered coffee. The hotel’s AC isn’t nearly good enough to make coffee a really viable option. 

“Then let’s not talk about it,” Billy says. And Alan feels like a complete and total ass because Billy knows, Billy must surely know even now that Alan’s still in touch with Ellie, still talks to Tim every day and Lex almost as often, even chats with Eric Kirby over email with the disastrous typing Lex calls hunt-and-peck and though he supposes that’s meant to remind him of birds he thinks each time of a velociraptor; Lex tells him it’s the same for her. He even speaks with the insufferable mathematician from time to time; they send each other their books like some kind of pseudo-academic penpal scheme, chapter by chapter via courier from Chicago down to Texas or vice versa. Ian uses green pen to mark his thoughts on the pages because, Alan strongly suspects, he has some strange notion in his head that students take direction better when he doesn’t say _you’re wrong_ in bright red ink. Alan uses red. He’s a traditionalist. 

But what all of this really means, _really_ means, is the only one living who was involved in John Hammond’s disaster that Alan’s actively or at least not quite just passively avoided since it all began and ended is him, is the man sitting there across the table from him over dinner, is Billy Brennan. The look that Billy’s not quite easy smile is there to hide tells Alan Billy’s worked that out. He sighs. 

“It’s not because of Isla Sorna,” Alan says at last. And then Billy’s smile fades away completely.

***

“You’re leaving,” Alan said.

“I’m leaving.” Billy nodded. 

“You didn’t ask me for a reference.”

“I went to someone else.”

Alan didn’t ask why though he didn’t know the answer. He thinks he’s worked it out since but he’s not about to ask now, either. And so they sit in uncharacteristic silence. 

“I’ll let you get back to work,” Alan says, after an awkward pause he’s not otherwise sure how to fill. He fishes bills from his wallet to cover the cost of both meals, sets them down amongst the dirty dishes.

“I’m not working tonight, Alan,” Billy replies. “Neither are you.” Alan pauses with one hand pressing twenties to the table top. “If it’s not Isla Sorna then what is it?”

Alan purses his lips. He rests his hands at the edge of the table, bills abandoned to their fate. “Montana,” he says, before he can think to _not_ say it, and so Billy laughs at him, somehow no malice in it. 

“You’re an idiot,” Billy says, and he stands to leave the table. “Come upstairs.”

And Alan follows because he’s genuinely not sure at all what else to do. 

Montana was eight years ago, nearly nine, a summer at the dig with tents and jeeps and big RVs down the rickety road into next to nothing except for the fossilised bones of dinosaurs. Alan goes out there every year with his team of students on their compulsory fieldwork, grad students there for the experience to pad CVs, but there’s never been another summer like the year they found the tyrannosaurus. 

It started with tail bones but it didn’t take long for them to understand what they’d found. The students were excited - their first _real_ dinosaur like none of the smaller ones counted somehow - and Alan Grant presided over all of it. He called Ellie who understood his excitement as the find could likely fund the dig for three more years at least, thought about phoning Ian because he’d been there the day the T Rex broke out of the paddock but in the end he didn’t do it; three days later, though, when they were all still riding high on the discovery, an envelope arrived from Texas. Inside was a note from Ian Malcolm, a doodle of a T Rex stepping on a car there on torn graph paper that made Alan laugh and laugh and laugh hysterically, irrationally, until Billy came in to say he was scaring the students.

It was then that Billy kissed him, like it was the only thing he could think of to stop him laughing that way that Alan knew made him sound a bit broken round the edges and probably he was. Billy stepped up to him there inside the finds tent, stepped in between Alan’s thighs as he sat there on a high if unstable stool, hands on Alan’s prickly cheeks and mouth stopping Alan’s what Alan remembers as being quite effectively. 

Billy pulled back slowly after that, after a good long moment with his mouth pressed up to his, eyes flickering open to look at Alan from far too close by for either one of them not to feel slightly cross-eyed. Then he stepped away. 

“You didn’t have to do that,” Alan said. 

“I didn’t _have_ to,” Billy confirmed, as he studied him. Then he smiled, broadly, perhaps a little forced, once he’d apparently received an answer Alan didn’t realise he’d given. “Don’t panic, it’s just a kiss.” He gave an exaggerated wink. “Forget it ever happened.” And he left the tent. Somehow the dino doodle still there in Alan’s hands didn’t seem quite so damned hilarious anymore. 

He still has the sketch, a little faded now from the sun and overzealous college heating but pinned up to his office noticeboard with articles and submission dates, a reminder of something that’s not actually Ian Malcolm at all and quite another T Rex. He thinks about it as he rides the elevator up to Billy’s floor, the two of them at opposite sides, leaning apart like Alan guesses they’ve been doing for years. They walk down the corridor, Alan a few steps behind and Billy checks back over his shoulder like he expects him to bolt at any second. Alan supposes he’s thought about doing that; he’s just not sure if his own occasional occupational sciatica or Billy’s post-operative thigh muscle issues would be the biggest hindrance to a lunatic corridor steeplechase. He’s decided he doesn’t want to find out.

Billy swipes his keycard and lets them both inside. The door clicks locked behind them, and Alan wonders what the hell he’s doing there at all. He should have stayed at home. He didn’t have to come to the conference.

“I told you to forget it,” Billy says, like it’s that easy to pick up a conversation that started eight years ago and Alan wonders if perhaps it is. 

“I didn’t.”

“I wish you had.”

“I don’t.”

And Billy looks at him then like he’s sprouted wings and turned straight into a pterondon so Alan laughs, and laughs, and doubles over as he leans back against the locked hotel room door because it’s ludicrous, it really is. But then Billy’s there in front of him, he kneels there as Alan lets himself slide down the door to his backside there on the floor and he kisses him, Billy kisses him all stubble and key lime pie and callused fingertips at his cheeks that match Alan’s own, and then, _then_ , he’s not laughing. It’s not funny anymore. Their foreheads rest down together once Billy’s pulled away and it’s like it was never funny at all. 

They’ve never talked about what happened that day in Montana and not just because Billy left so soon after. Alan’s convinced himself since then or tried to at the very least that neither of them meant anything by it, not at all. He’s told himself Billy with his youthful swagger and his offbeat sense of humour just meant to shut him up but even so, it’s stuck with him since. He’s avoided all of the _what ifs_ of it by avoiding Billy Brennan, telling himself he wasn’t just using _he’s my student_ as a reason not to broach the subject because he knew there was another question waiting there behind, one he didn’t want to answer. But Billy was so close to graduation. Age and mentorship had nothing to do with it. 

Billy’s in his thirties now and Alan knows he’s never married. Billy’s the popular one, the go-to guy for television sound bites, the fun books for kids, the one who’ll actually speak about what happened there on Isla Sorna like none of the others do as often, if at all. Alan’s followed his career because he tells himself he’s proud of what Billy’s gone on to become; he’s not like his mentor in many ways, he knows, but what he took from the island and the island took from him has steadied him somehow. Billy’s not been reckless since. At least not except for the risk he took in Montana that didn’t pay off at all. 

“Are we going to forget this, too?” Billy asks, pulling back to look at him though his hand rests hot at the nape of Alan’s neck.

“I didn’t forget the first time,” Alan says, a little gruffly. Then: “No.”

And Billy smiles just like the past eight years mean nothing. 

***

The presentation Billy gave the following day was excellent, Alan thinks, months on. He listened, at the back of the hall, feeling strangely proud though he supposed and still supposes that was not perhaps an emotion he should associate with Billy going forward. They’d spent the evening there in Billy’s room, quite perfectly chaste as they talked together except perhaps in the way Billy kissed him goodnight when he stood up to leave, told him to stop being so proper and so, after a little teasing and goading and eventual self-persuasion, Alan’s hands went up to rest at Billy’s waist. He kissed him back, Billy muttering against him about how that was eight years - nearly nine - in the making. Nearly nine years wasted. Alan didn’t disagree. 

Alan had his flight home booked already so the goodbye they said was brief, Alan interrupting Billy with his students to say he hoped they could catch up again soon. The girl on Billy’s phone was one of his students, it turned out. Alan felt decidedly ridiculous for where his thoughts had taken him on that particular score. 

“You know I’m working in Michigan, right?” Billy said. “You _literally_ came six times as far to get here as if you’d just come to where I live.”

Alan knew, of course. And three days later he was there knocking on Billy’s office door, odd looks from passing staff because it was, even then, even now, difficult to find anyone in their shared field who didn’t and doesn’t know Dr Alan Grant.

It’s been eight months now since Alan took that trip to Michigan. Eight months of effort he was never sure he’d make again he’s so set in his ways at this point, flights he’s not exactly keen on taking, four-hour drives across state lines once he’s finished on a Friday so he can knock on Billy’s front door like he doesn’t have a key and act like it’s not still new and strange and maybe fractionally exciting to spend the weekend in a home that isn’t his. Now he knows where the spoons are to stir his coffee in the morning, can find the bathroom in the dark so he doesn’t wake Billy when he wants to drink a glass of water. And he’s let Billy coach him through the rest, the parts he thought would be more difficult, till he can take off his shirt in the bedroom and not feel like he’s breaking all the rules because Billy’s not been his student for years and no one would have cared even then. He can look at him as he undresses and not feel he has to quickly turn away, because he knows now that Billy likes it. He can trace the tan lines left by shirts and shorts from long days spent out in the sun, trace the scars on Billy’s body and be grateful that he lived. He finally muses on the past when the mood takes him to do so and doesn’t shut it out - he finally thinks of _his_ past, of _their_ past, and not just the past that’s prehistory. 

Perhaps it’s easy to be with Billy because of the past they share or maybe it’s something else entirely; maybe it’s the fact they share the same passions at heart, even if Billy still skydives sometimes and Alan’s such a fan of terra firma, even if Billy’s taste in music makes Alan vacate the premises and their sleeping patterns sometimes don’t mesh at all. It doesn’t even seem to matter that Alan’s so much older, that none of Alan’s colleagues understand what’s happened and what’s happening, because Billy’s all seem to get it perfectly. He came out three years ago, Billy says. Alan’s decided that “coming out” is a nonsense at his age but Ellie seems pleased that he seems happy at least. Lex and Tim met Billy years ago and Lex tells him she could tell back then, which is news to Alan because he’d thought Billy was something of a womaniser. Ian’s copying Billy into the couriered copies of his latest book and Alan guesses that’s his way of saying he approves. 

Billy takes off his glasses and sets them on the desk; he comes across the room and pulls off Alan’s glasses, too. He’s not subtle and Alan suspects he’d probably dislike him if he were - Billy’s always clear on what he wants. Alan likes that kind of clarity.

“Come to bed,” Billy says and so Alan goes with him, close behind. 

They stretch out together in the bed they often share and it’s obvious what Billy wants because he’s wanted it since before they ever went to Isla Sorna. Alan puts his hands on him, hot beneath the sheets, pushes into him because that’s what they _both_ want; it’s just taken them this long to get there. It’s maybe taken Alan this long to realise the excitement he feels with Billy Brennan means he survived Jurassic Park after all.

He’ll retire this summer, he thinks, and join Billy at his dig in Colorado. He’s 54 years old; that’s old enough for the end of his career, and the start of the rest of his life.


End file.
